Why Doctor Who Became Popular Again

Because in 2013, cleverness is cool

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The reasons why the assassination of JFK warrants a big honkin' half-centennial commemoration should be self-evident. Someone murdered the friggin' president. Not everyone believes the official explanation of who or why. It's a big deal. But why is the British sci-fi institution Doctor Who, which made its first appearance the day after JFK's final appearance, also a big deal in its own right, one that warrants Google making a video game for the occasion?

For starters, depending on whom you ask, William Hartnell either got too sick or too grouchy to carry on as The Doctor, a nearly-eternal Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey, in 1966. To keep the show from expiring alongside Hartnell's contract, the shot callers invented Time Lord regeneration to explain why The Doctor suddenly had a different personality and Patrick Troughton's face.

You see, a mortally-wounded Time Lord doesn't usually die. His or her expiring body dissolves so a replacement — sometimes of the younger, sexier variety — can materialize in its place. Doctor Who certainly isn't the only franchise that's had multiple actors play the lead, but it might be the only one with reinvention embedded in its mythology. The Doctor flies through infinity in a TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space) disguised as a blue police box, resolves the galactic crisis of the week, and becomes a new person once every few years. If he (or maybe some day, she) doesn't do these things, it's not Doctor Who, and the fandom understands this.

Last August, Peter Capaldi was announced as heir apparent to the current and hugely-popular portrayer of The Doctor, Matt Smith. Some Whovians felt crestfallen that a woman or person of color wasn't finally getting a crack at piloting the TARDIS. Otherwise, the response was mostly favorable. Meanwhile, Batman dorks called for Ben Affleck's head on a stick when they found out he's taking over for Christian Bale. As opposed to Who devotees, Dark Knight obsessives haven't been conditioned to celebrate change.

Another reason for The Doctor's viability owes to what we expect from pop culture heroes in 2013. The '90s were the age of the The Terminator, Spawn, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Buffy Summers, and John McClane — stoic badasses who trounced evil with absolute grit and an occasional one-liner. By no coincidence, Doctor Who went off the air in 1989. Apart from a 1996 TV movie, television during the Clinton years went largely Who-less.

The Doctor hardly ever punches or shoots anybody. The closest thing to a weapon he carries is a sonic screwdriver that's mostly only useful for unlocking doors. He thwarts armies of interstellar death squads like the Daleks and the Cybermen with preternatural cunning and encyclopedic knowledge of virtually every subject. The Doctor is not a stoic badass. The Doctor is a huge nerd.

Only smarty-pantses could plausibly figure out how to stop Godzilla and his scientifically-hatched ilk, which made the '60s a boom era for nerds in sci-fi/adventure lore. For whatever reason, Gen X-era audiences prefered their escapist fantasies a bit more meat-and-potatoes.

But in 2013, the tertiary big-screen solo adventure of engineering genius Tony Stark made more money than any other movie (thus far). Tons of us fretted tirelessly over the fate of chemistry wiz Walter White. Even though the first one bombed, Aaron Sorkin is supposedly putting together another Steve Jobs movie, and why shouldn't he? The last film he wrote about a dude who was good with computers almost won an Oscar for Best Picture. In 2008, America chose a charismatic nerd over a war hero, and four years later, decided not to trade the nerd in for a walking entitlement complex.

Today's society values cleverness more than it used to, meaning more than not at all. But it's been enough to set up Doctor Who for a resurgence. BBC America wouldn't be simulcasting the 50th anniversary episode, "The Day of The Doctor," into movie theaters tomorrow if they didn't expect to sell a lot of tickets.

Credit also goes to Matt Smith and show runner Steven Moffat, who maximized The Doctor's crossover appeal in ways that hadn't happened before they took over in 2010. Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor broods over an off-camera annihilation of Gallifrey and wears black leather six years too late to The Matrix's party. Beneath a skippy veneer, David Tennant's Tenth Doctor carries a solemn, world-weary sadness. He's kind of emo. But Smith's Eleventh Doctor does a better job of concealing his 900-plus years worth of baggage. By dialing up the cavalier aspects of his character's disposition, donning an ironic bowtie and fez, and minimizing references to decades-old mythology, Smith became (and I mean this in the most complimentary way possible) The Hipster Doctor.

While the 1976 episode "The Deadly Assassin" establishes that Time Lords can only regenerate 12 times, the BBC doesn't care about that and The Doctor will keep regenerating until he's no longer profitable. After Smith takes a bow and transforms, probably at the conclusion of "The Day of the Doctor," hopefully Peter Capaldi proves worthy of the mantle. But if he doesn't pan out, what harm could one (or several) more regeneration(s) do?